Round Rock girls found safe, kidnapper charged

Terry Allen Miles allegedly abducted two Round Rock girls, and remains a person of interest in their mother’s death. Miles was charged with kidnapping Thursday afternoon.

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Posted
Thursday, January 4, 2018 5:48 pm

By Richard Stone, Taylor Press

The man who allegedly abducted two Round Rock girls, and remains a person of interest in their mother’s death, was charged with kidnapping Thursday afternoon.

According to the Department of Justice, a federal complaint was unsealed in Austin Thursday, charging Terry Allen Miles, 44, for the kidnapping.

Miles was apprehended late Wednesday after the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Department, in southern Colorado, received a tip that he’d been seen in the area around La Veta, CO.

In a Wednesday evening press conference, Round Rock Police Chief Allen Banks said Las Animas deputies began a search for the man and the two girls after receiving a tip they were in the area.

Deputies spotted a 2017 Hyundai Accent, the same one in which Miles fled the state, and pulled up behind him. Banks said Miles began driving erratically and, after the arrival of backup, the deputies initiated a “high-risk traffic stop.”

Both the girls were in the car and unharmed.

“We still have a lot of work to do, a lot of questions to be answered,” said Banks. “This is still an ongoing, active case but Terry Miles is in custody and the girls are safe. That was our goal the whole time.”

Banks said that Round Rock detectives were to travel to Colorado Thursday morning to interview Miles.

Round Rock Police discovered the body of the girls’ mother, Tonya Bates, 44, Sunday morning. The children were not in the home at the time, nor was Miles, who has been described as Bates’ roommate.

Initially, Round Rock police said they had responded to welfare concern calls at Bates’ home twice on Saturday, once around 10:30 a.m. and again at about 8:30 that evening. Neither time did officers find anything suspicious.

Sunday, police had information that compelled them to enter the home. They discovered Bates’ body inside and her children and car missing. Court documents indicate she suffered from blunt force trauma. Police do not know how long Bates had been dead, but ordered an autopsy.

Court records say that at about 1 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 30, Miles’ mother received a text message from a phone that belonged to one of the daughters. Round Rock police found a phone belonging to one of the daughters in a heavily-wooded area next to a Round Rock Wal-Mart. Surveillance from that store showed that a person who appeared to be Miles bought camping gear, which was loaded into a car that fit the description of Bates’ car.

According to reporting in the Austin American-Statesman, CBS Denver and other media outlets, Miles has an extensive criminal history in both Louisiana and California. That history included several Louisiana arrests, including for domestic violence, child pornography, and allegations of the 2015 rape of a teenage girl. That last case remains open.

Miles was also charged with second-degree attempted murder for beating up his girlfriend in 2011, a case which was closed because the woman later committed suicide. He was also a person of interest in a 2014 murder of another girlfriend’s mother.

Between 1995 and 2007, Miles served prison time in California for domestic abuse and parole violations.